Removing the Fence: How the Extra Laws Given by Man Make It Difficult to Follow the Word of God

Removing the Fence by Daniel Schwartz is a theologically careful and pastorally compassionate exploration of one of the most persistent challenges in religious life across Jewish, Messianic, and Christian traditions: the human tendency to surround the Word of God with layers of man-made rules, traditions, and requirements that, over time, are presented with the same authority as the Scripture they were meant to protect. Drawing on the ancient rabbinic concept of the syag la-Torah - the "fence around the Torah" first described in the Mishnah's Pirkei Avot - and tracing its parallels through the development of Christian canon law, medieval ecclesiastical tradition, the Protestant Reformation, and contemporary denominational culture, Schwartz argues that this fence, though built by sincere and devoted people, consistently produces three damaging outcomes: it exhausts those who genuinely try to comply with its ever-expanding requirements; it creates performers who learn to satisfy outward standards while the inner life remains untransformed; and it drives away those who see, reasonably and accurately, that the structure in front of them does not resemble the gracious, pursuing God revealed in Scripture. Engaging key scholarship from across traditions - including E. P. Sanders' landmark work on Paul and Palestinian Judaism, N. T. Wright's New Perspective on Paul, David Flusser's study of Jesus within his Jewish context, David Stern's Messianic Jewish commentary, and Philip Yancey's pastoral theology of grace - the book moves through fifteen chapters from historical diagnosis to theological clarification to practical guidance, offering readers in every tradition a set of discernment tools for distinguishing the genuine commands of God from the accumulated additions of human religious culture, and an invitation to encounter the unobstructed Word of God in the spacious place of grace that Jesus described when he said, "For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:30, NIV).